Elphonine: The Green Skinned Waif
by Victor Maguire
Summary: Elphonine is a hybrid of Victor Hugo's tragic waif Eponine Thenardier and of Maguire's Elphaba Thropp. Will chaos ensue for one who is both greenskinned and in the trenches of poverty?
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

The Regent of Oz, mighty, majestic, and demanding, stood before a glass window through which she peered to glimpse the sight of the Emerald city. Out on the streetwalks, the rich ogled at the sights of the luxuries found in the city shops; in the dark back alleys, glimpses of the dirtied, tortured faces of the poor were visible to the Regent's eyes.

A light breeze entered, and she shivered at the cold caress of this breeze. Coincidentally, she had also been glancing at the cafes where students where rumoured to have been planning the demise of her regime.

Perhaps she shook also from her Old Age. The Old, after all, is more sensitive to these things than the Young.

As she glanced further through the city like a watchwoman, the glass she looked through reflected back the gaze of a wrinkled face, aged from long toils and years of both joy and agony. Beneath her the cafes where the young and rebellious students gathered slowly emerged to view as the Regent stepped forward.

She could feel it coming, the rumbling of change in the streets and the gradual destruction of her regime.

The time for the Old to leave inched closer and closer...


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

_A Portrait of the Emerald City_

From a distance, the Emerald City, benign and old, emerges as a majestic Emerald in a splash of sun rays. It appears to the average traveller like a polished jewel, both glamourous and repulsively dazzling in its bright green glow. The glitzy manner in which it was built was an homage to the arrival of the Savior of Oz, known only as the Wizard. He valued luxury; he fancied the rich Ozian ways of life. Inside his home, a palace located within the city itself, he kept collections of rubies, emeralds, and other items of fancy. The Emerald City, it is said, reflected its ruler's penchance for jewellry.

One enters the gold-rimmed gates of this enormous place; one then enters into the din and hubbub of business. The strangely mechanic order of the day passes into one's ears, with the sounds of passersby thumping on stone sidewalks, wheel barrows hobbling and galloping on cobblestone streets, the gallop of Horses carrying their daily burden across the streets and hoping for a rest from the day.

At the very magnitude of this hubbub, this unstoppable activity, is the wealthy Ozian. He, along with his companion, are both the products of Ozian upper class society; his tastes are refined, his manner decent, and his disposition that of utter snobbery. Descendant of the last bloodlines of the ousted Regent, he pushes his way through the eager crowds gathered around the Emerald City Theatre, his cockiness apparent in the way he nudged a young boy dressed in rags off his feet. His companion, a Madame Olivay from the Glikkus, snorts at the young boy who has just fallen. This is the insensitivity of the average wealthy Ozian, bred from the snobbishness of the aristocracy. But they are not all like this.

Beyond the Emerald City Theatre, there are the liberal students of the university, perfectly aware of the mass discrepancy invisible to the middle and upper classes. They see themselves as the voice of the downtrodden, champions of the helpless, spokespeople for the destitute. Here now, one sees them assembled within the cozy confines of a cafe; their leaders shout in a passionate preach. The conditions of the Ozian poor, they exclaim, shall be avenged with great gusto. The conditions of the Ozian poor, they shout, can only be repaired through the removal of the aristocratic urges of the wealthy Ozian.

But who are these masses to whom these students claim to be champions of?

Who are these people the upper class spit readily upon, and at times even kill?

They are the invisible Ozian, the destitute member of society ousted by condition. These people inhabit the backcorners and alcoves of the city; they toil from day to night attempting to make do for their families. There are those that remain honest hard workers, but the others...they turn to thievery and crime. Some lurk in the shadows of the backalleys, waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting and naive victim loaded with money. Others work in factories beginning at 5 in the morning, not coming home until the sun sets.

The Ozian poor, it is said, is encompassed by the shadow, but knows no light.


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

_The Gamin and the Emerald Waif_

"Hey, watch your step!"

Shellroche grabbed his cap, which had toppled onto the ground along with him, and slunk away from the crowd. It was futile to even attempt to enter the theatre with that massive a crowd. Night was approaching, and a chill caressed past Shellroche's arms. He pulled his rags closer together, as if to guard himself from the oncoming breath of winter.

He stopped beside Tanfrec's Tinkering Toys, a shop which he frequented only as far as its large glass display window. The owner, long-time a resident of the Emerald City, grew weary of the missing toys and broken glasses he attributed to mischievous "rabble" like Shellroche. For this reason, this large window was a barrier to the young boy, the only barrier coming in between himself and the toys in front of his face.

The toy locomotive behind the window encircled the miniature track's route, and Shellroche could easily see his figure, along with the cityscape behind him, reflected in the elaborately made tinted windows of the minature train set. Beside the trains, Shellroche eyed the wooden vehicle painted a scarlet colour; its wheels were coated with a black varnish. He imagined himself grasping the toy in his hands, pushing the thing across a flat surface and doing as the other children did; he imagined himself actually playing. If only, he said to himself, he could somehow acquire such a toy. They were so expensive, though. His parents could barely afford to pay for their rent this Lurlinemas; how to pay for a toy like that?

Shellroche shuddered. Someone had tapped him on the shoulder. He glanced at the window glass, only to see the reflection of a tall, wisp-thin figure.

"Wotcher looking at?" exclaimed a deep, roughened voice.

Shellroche turned back to see his older sister. She looked radiantly green at night, as if she were a part of the Emerald City buildings herself. Sure enough, her skin was a shade of green from birth.

"Elphonine...I-I..I wish I had that toy over there, in the corner."

Elphonine patted the little boy on the back gently, as if to ease some aching pain.

"Don't worry, little one. Mama and Papa; they will find a way. There will be a way to get out of this mess."


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

_Elphonine_

However optimistic she wanted to seem on the surface, Elphonine was no stranger to feeling the depths of her family's conditions. She would glance upon the table at home, conjuring up a table filled with a feast fit for kings. For most of the months at home, on that dinner table, however, there was only a loaf of bread half-eaten and half-molded.

On the rare nights that she would be home with her whole family, she would look at Mama and Papa's faces, wrinkled from the years of toil and burdened with the anxieties that lay ahead. They were not always in this horrid state. Papa had been a professor at local University, only to lose his job when the Wizard had come into power. Mama was a student at the Hospital who had sacrificed her doctorate for a wife's apron. Their children, all three of them, had been taught to read and write.

Their descent into poverty is a complex matter to discuss; it seemed to the parents that it was merely a series of bad choices that had brought them into these conditions. One thing lead to another, said the father, until he found himself part of a gang of robbers; the mother made no remark. She tried fulfilling the family's domestic needs for food and drink. The neighbours, who were better off than the family we speak of now, pitied their conditions. They were always hungry, and oftentimes, it was not always the same type of hunger found in the stomach.

Elphonine's younger siblings Azelssarose and Shellroche would tug at her skirt, begging for some food or drink. For the Throppiers, the question approached at sunset was "Is there dinner today?"

There was never time to read, as much as Elphonine would like, nor any time to write. These were the two activities she most wanted to give time for, but given her unsightly appearance and even more unsightly skin, no denizen of the Emerald City would dare share with her a book.

At the Royal Library, Elphonine attempted to enter its stuffy academic halls and wax her mind philosophic with the aged preachings of great Animal philosophers. The furthest step into the entrance lobby she could make, however, ran behind the bold black line indicating parking space for library visitors. The old, slick-haired, strick-suited librarian that sat at the front desk shunned her and shooed her away.

Refused even entrance into these halls of learning, Elphonine sought other resources to read and write. She lurked into the backalleys of the large apartments for the rich and searched into the dumpsters for any discarded novels and the like.

Passersby who glimpsed her figure hunching over the dumpsters uttered a vague "Hmmph" at her actions, suspicious of its innocence. She seemed dangerous to the average passerby; on her face was painted a continually sad, desperate expression, which only frightened the passersby. Her bold green skin seemed to be another assertion of her outward wickedness, or so the passersby who glimpsed her often commented. In reality, there were bits of truth to these assumptions.

She had been involved in several robberies, often not as a robber herself, but as one who would warn the robbers of any coming authorities. Her green skin blended well with the emerald colourings of the city buildings, a convenient feature for one who must continually hide into alcoves and shadows.

Elphonine had no friends, really, apart from her two younger siblings. Even the robbers were frightened of her. Who would, after all, want to be associated with someone whose skin was not human at all?


End file.
